I’m just beginning a new crop of peer learning projects for nonprofits to learn the practice of being networked nonprofits and use social media effectively at Zoetica and through my work as Visiting Scholar at the Packard Foundation.

I’m also trying to shift my own practice into more design and train the trainers and coach the coaches versus direct delivery. It’s hard because you have to be very disciplined about noticing and documenting your practice.

Wikis can be terrific platforms for supporting professional learning in real time, but it requires a comfort level with “learning in public.” Learning in private is what most of us did in school. You wrote your essay, studied your spelling words, took tests (without looking at anyone else’s answers!). Learning was an individual, often solitary activity. For many of us of a certain age, that style has carried over to our work culture where we are rewarded for our expertise and to keep quiet what we don’t know (or screw up).

Creating an environment for learning in public means that it is okay to say “I don’t know” about an issue or problem and to ask others what they think. When professionals acknowledge not knowing and reach out to a colleague, it not only opens us to learning, but it signals to others. Using social media and networked approaches successfully requires a culture shift away from learning in private to learning public or what Nancy White has called “Over the Shoulder Learning.”

How do you do this? How do create an environment where it is okay to learn in public? This environment can be a training workshop or it can be in an organization. One answer comes from Eugene Eric Kim in a presentation he did about networks, “Be the Change You Want To See” – it’s about modeling.

Three Different Designs for Public Learning On Wiki

Over the past five years, I have created many wikis to support online learning projects and wikispaces has been one of my platforms of choice because it is easy to use, free, and integrate other social media content. There are three different models:

Network Learning: This example involves a network of people looking at a field of practice beyond a peer learning group. For example, on the Packard Foundation OE wiki , which started as a “see through filing cabinet” has moved into engaging with nonprofit consultants and evaluation geeks about the prelminary findings of its evaluation of nonprofit consulting practice. NTEN facilitated a wiki to create workshop curriculum for social media and nonprofits with more than 200 nonprofit technology practitioners as part of the WeAreMedia project.

How else are nonprofit professionals, organizations, and fields using social platforms like wikis for public learning about practice?

8 Responses

Beth, many of us in higher education are intentionally seeking ways to make learning more public for our students, too–while we have some privacy concerns given their student status, within classes I use wiki assignments, shared discussion boards, and student-generated blog posts, among other tools that provide some transparency to students’ development and invite their classmates as participants (my assignments, in some cases, specifically require that they interact not just with me but with each other, too). And I even use my public blog in class some, too, so that students interface with their future colleagues in that venue as their learning progresses, too. A big part of my goals with these methods is that students will learn to embrace the learning process, and the community that they can build around it, rather than institutionalizing a more artificial learning relationship with a professor that, quite honestly, is seldom replicated in “real life”!

Thanks for referencing the “public learning” that’s going in/around the David and Lucile Packard Foundation’s Organizational Effectiveness Program. The TCC Group is posting some early findings from research related to 1300 capacity building projects where non-profits have hired consultants for help. It would be great to hear via the wiki link below what folks think about the following early finding (and anyone can enter the wiki and comment without having to join the wiki if they like).

Early Finding: Field knowledge (e.g., Reproductive Health, Conservation, etc.) and nonprofit experience were more likely to be related to a non-profit’s satisfaction with a capacity building consultant than specific consulting work/experience (e.g., strategic planning, fundraising, etc.). Surprised, Not Surprised, Questions or Comments? This is one of many TCC Group Goldmine research findings that will be posted for our “learning in public”.

Beth, Living the Path (http://pbeye.info/48D) is a great online community (and wiki) with thousands of pieces of data and thousands of community members. Our members include students, executives, and health marketers. It’s a great place to network and gain knowledge through our various articles, case studies, and infographics.

[…] for supporting professional learning in real time, but it requires a comfort level with “learning in public.” You can learn in public in different ways – self-directed individual learning, with a […]

Sorry it’s taken a while to get back to you re: your question about Living the Path. I just came across this post. First, thanks much for your kind word about the wiki. To answer your question, the wiki is maintained by Jayme (my colleague) and myself. In addition to the two of us, we have a writer who adds content to the wiki. There are also people within the broader Living the Path community who apply to become “Community Writers.” Overall, Jayme, the writer and I are responsible for gardening the wiki and approving community writers who agree to develop content that’s within the standards we’ve established for the wiki.

We also have a social news site, the NewsHub, which is similar to Reddit and Delicious, which is less closely moderated where community members post content related to the field of health marketing communications. If your readers are interested in learning more about the community and the resources within it, I encourage them to visit http://www.pathoftheblueeye.com to learn more.